Chapter 2 #4
“How he made something that’s still intact and still beautiful after four hundred years of use, plus the vandalism and abuse,” he said. “That’s real talent. I’d love to learn from it.” He turned away, taking his mug back into the kitchen.
My eyes fell on Lucia’s shelf of photos as I gazed after him, and a thought occurred to me. I waited until he reappeared in the doorway.
“How did you know who I was, outside the house?” I asked.
That subtle smile lit his eyes again. “Lucia showed me pictures,” he admitted. “She told me about you three. She bragged you up, actually. She was very proud.”
A dark suspicion dawned in my mind. “Bragged me up?” I repeated. “Oh, no. What do you mean? What did she tell you?”
“That you work too hard,” he said. “That you let everyone take advantage of you. That you live in a tiny Manhattan apartment surrounded by motorcycle gangs, crackheads, meth heads, and the criminally insane. That you come across as bossy and managing, but you’d give the shirt off your back to a stranger in need?—”
I winced. “Oh, no. I see exactly where this is going.”
“And that you’re not married. She said you’d be here for her birthday. She wanted to introduce us.”
“Oh, God.” I felt myself turn a hot red. Lucia, for fuck’s sake. Really?
Lucia would never have done this to me if this guy was taken. And a swift glance at Knightly’s left hand confirmed that he wore no ring.
Of course, he intercepted the glance. His smile deepened, and my mortification deepened with it. “I’m so sorry,” I babbled. “You being put on the spot, I mean. Lucia just couldn’t stand it that I’m single.”
“That was my impression, too. But I will admit, it is strange.”
I covered my hot cheeks with my hands. “What’s strange?”
“That you’re single. You’re not at all what I expected.”
Don't ask it. Don’t ask it. Just don't. “What did you expect?” I asked, helpless to stop myself.
“She told me you were beautiful. I could see from the pictures that it was true. She just didn’t tell me how beautiful. Photos can’t capture that.”
Beautiful? Wild energy crackled through my nerves, as if he’d touched me.
Suddenly, I started to imagine how it would feel if he did.
I vibrated. Strange, that I was single? Hah. Little did he know. I forced my voice not to shake. “Don’t flatter me.”
“I’m not flattering anyone. I don’t do that. Just the plain truth.”
I looked away, flustered. No clue what to say.
A long, agonizing moment passed. “Ah. I’m so sorry,” he said quietly. “That was totally wrong. I can’t believe I just said that to you. Please forget I said it.”
“It’s okay,” I murmured. Right. Like I would. Ever. In my life.
But the easy intimacy I’d felt with him before was gone.
Knightly’s face was closed and unreadable as we exchanged phone numbers.
He and his assistant, Eoin, would unload supplies that day and start on the kitchen tomorrow, though I had to clean it first. We set a time to meet the next morning. All done. Just the facts, ma’am.
It gave me a pang to hand over Lucia’s house keys to a man I’d just met, but the thought of having someone in the place was oddly comforting. I hated the thought of the house lying empty and bereft. This way, at least it was in a process of renewal. One that Lucia herself had set in motion.
Once he had the keys, there was no reason to not to let him and his assistant get on with their work. I shook his hand politely, gathered up my bag and the carefully bubble-wrapped bronze Cellini satyr, and took off.
I was pissed with Lucia for setting me up. At the same time, I missed her desperately. I felt raw and shaky, desperate to glom on to something else to think about. God knows, I’d been twitchy about dating and romance since long before Lucia’s death.
It occurred to me that Lucia had probably filled Knightly in on my string of romantic disasters. The thought made me cringe.
The first time I’d been dumped at the altar by my fiancé was very bad. The second time had been worse. By the third time it happened, I was seriously starting to consider that maybe I was the problem.
Not that I had the faintest clue how to fix it.
So? Fine. I could resign myself to being a single woman.
I would content myself with a series of cats.
Or do what Lucia had done. If I experienced a great upwelling of motherly energy in my heart, and had the means and time, I could always adopt some half-grown kids who desperately needed a home.
There was more than one way to have a family.
The center of a woman’s life did not have to be a man.
Besides, men didn’t seem to enjoy being at the center of my life. By all accounts, it was a prickly, uncomfortable place to be.
My sisters and Lucia had all politely despised Freedy, Ron, and Peter. But was it their fault they’d fallen out of love with me? A person either loved someone or they didn’t. I wasn’t about to marry a man who’d found out he didn’t.
I wondered, not for the first time, if I lacked some innate womanly skill. Maybe I should’ve practiced gazing up through fluttering lashes more—hanging on their every word, puffing up their egos.
But that wasn’t me. I’d always been too busy managing their careers, making them take their vitamins, wrangling their anxiety, making sure their socks matched.
Freedy told me I was too controlling. Ron said I was “driven.” Peter told me I just was too prosaic. He said that I couldn’t join him in that place full of dreams where he needed to go to make the magic happen.
But he sure hadn’t minded me finding lucrative gigs for him from that prosaic other world.
What a shame that watching me do all the scut work to support his precious career had been such a turnoff to him.
Fussbudget Nancy, the detail freak. And that damn phone of mine—always ringing, shattering his precious creative trance. Aww. So sorry.
Not that I was bitter or anything.
The strange, raw mood I was in brought on a brutal kind of self-honesty.
I stared, hot-eyed, out the windshield, and let myself ponder it.
The real problem with my fiancés had been sex, above all.
Sex had always been problematic for me. I didn’t like feeling vulnerable, squished, crowded.
Being overwhelmed in any way, physical or emotional, made me run away in my head. I became unreachable.
When that happened, the fun was definitely over. Everybody out of the pool.
My lovers, not surprisingly, had become impatient with this, and who could blame them.
The thought of having one of those uncomfortable, it’s-not-you-it’s-me conversations with Liam Knightly made me want to curl up and rock in the corner.
After Freedy’s defection, I’d sworn off romance. Celibacy was easier, less embarrassing, and way cheaper. No bikini waxing, no scratchy lace push-up bras. It was comfy stretch cotton sports bras from here on out. Or better yet, no bras at all. Sweet, sweet freedom.
But Knightly’s gaze made me feel as if he’d seen something in me that no one else had, not even me. I wanted to see him again, to find out if it was a fluke. A trick of the light. A passing spasm.
It was an experiment doomed to fail, however, because the guy was just too big. And he exuded that aura of controlled power that made me feel vulnerable, even fully clothed and a full table-length away. I could only imagine how that vibe would feel if we were naked. Skin to skin. And oh, shit ?—
I screeched to a stop at the red light, just in time. Face flushed, heart pounding.
I, Nancy D’Onofrio, hyper-efficient multitasker, couldn’t even think about that man while driving.